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When you consider what to teach in your class, chances are you focus most of your attention on the poses and the order in which you intend to sequence them. Perhaps you also select a relevant reading or create a new playlist to set the mood. You might even think ahead to when you’ll dim or brighten the lights, increase or decrease the volume of your voice, or leave space for quiet.
But the experience of yoga is more than any of these individual components. It’s the experience that you curate for your students from the beginning to end of class.
There is another aspect of teaching that you might not have considered. One that has a subtle yet profound effect on the mood you create. And that’s the words you choose.
The problem is most of us are taught to share yoga cues in a single way: reciting a list of instructions regarding the students’ position, props, and the purpose of the pose. As a teacher, perhaps the most potent tool you can share with students is your voice. Simple changes in your yoga cues have the potential to completely change the emotional tenor of class. And how you do that can create an almost tangible difference in the vibe and experience of your students.
The Difference Between Active and Passive Yoga Cues
There has never been one “right” way to cue yoga. But there are two completely opposite ways to use your voice and focus your language as you cue, and each is equally correct, depending on where you’re at in class.
During the slower beginning and ending of class, as you cue poses that keep students close to the mat and moving slowly, you may instinctively lean on wording that is more subtle and introspective. Throughout the more uplifting and energizing sequences with more challenging poses, you probably rely on more active language to heighten the effort and intensity. If so, you’re already working with passive and active yoga cues.
There are more subtle ways the use of passive and active yoga cues can alter the experience of your class.
Passive Cues
The following approaches to your words during the quieter moments in class when movement is slow or students are still.
1. Bring Awareness to Internal or Sensory Experiences
When you rely on yoga cues that focus on internal sensations, you encourage introspection and interoception. Cues such as “feel your breath ebb and flow in the center of your body” and “sense your shoulders melting down your back” support inward focus.
2. Focus on the Passive
Your use of language can help students tune into poses that require no muscular effort or are assisted by gravity. As a result, they experience more ease and relaxation instead of tension or action. Passive words such as “allow,” “drop,” or “lean” reinforce the sense of surrender that some poses invite. For example, “allow your arms to drift down” or “lean the back of your body into the support of the floor.”
3. Rely on Invitational and Imaginative Language
When you want to create spaciousness in a pose for students to discern what they need, including additional syllables can support your verbal cues. For example, “sensing,” “imagining,” “exploring,” and “investigating” feel more spacious than the more active and and direct verbs “sense,” “imagine,” “explore,” or “investigate.”
Active Cues
Your language can also support the more intense movement-oriented sections of class.
1. Cue to External Reference Points
In the same way that internally oriented yoga cues draw students into sensing and feeling, cues that encourage actively interacting with the external environment generate intensity. For example, “use your lifted leg to push the back wall away” feels more specific, actionable, and powerful than the cue “engage your lifted leg.”
2. Focus on Activity and Engagement
Words that imply deliberate action can boost energy and motivation. Language such as “press,” “drive,” and “lift” add to the feeling of empowered and intentional action. For example, “drive down through your feet” and “press the floor away.”
3. Cue Concisely
Through the movement-oriented parts of your class, the most helpful thing you can do as a teacher is move students from one position to another with purpose. Although it’s always important to give students room to shape their practice to meet their own needs, at some point in your teaching, concise and direct cues create a more supportive and guided experience than long-winded ones, no matter how well-intended.
“Exhale, step your right foot toward your right hand” provides more clarity than “exhaling deeply, contract your belly and curl your bent right knee toward your chest, stepping your right foot as lightly as you can between your hands or behind your right hand or outside your right hand, depending on what feels more meaningful for you.”
In fact, the fewer syllables you rely on as you share basic directional cues to get a body part to move to a particular position, the more time there is to offer the options and clarifications your students truly need. Seek brevity everywhere. Saying “reach” or “stretch” is more powerful than saying “reaching” or “stretching.” Not to mention this allows space for students to tune into their breath—and for you to connect to yours before you share your next words.
